Where are the 28nm FPGAs?

[gmaxwell]

I'm surprised to not see some small mining devices based on artix7.  I would expect their power usage to be basically competitive with Avalon... and the retaskability of FPGA is worth paying a bit of a premium for...   Seems odd to me that there hasn't been any motion in that direction.

[1714480131]

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[Bicknellski]

I'm surprised to not see some small mining devices based on artix7.  I would expect their power usage to be basically competitive with Avalon... and the retaskability of FPGA is worth paying a bit of a premium for...   Seems odd to me that there hasn't been any motion in that direction.

Group buy? That be a project for DIY no?

[gmaxwell]

Well— for some level of DIY—  someone like RPH who feels at home skillet reflowing $150 FPGAs might consider it one.   I'm mostly surprised that none of the companies making S6LX150 devices (ztex, x6500, etc.) have produced a device based on 28nm FPGAs for sale. Availability has been good, they could have even beaten Avalon to market... and at the moment there is so much demand for ASICs you'd think you could make some good sales with something that was at least ASIC-competitive but with a lower time to market.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

artixminer.com based in Kenya in 5...4...3...

Ok, so we are another Bitcoin miner outfit coming out of nowhere, but we are not a scam. We will not take any money till we tell you we're ready, with our product line that is.

My partner and I have been mining bitcoins for several months now and we came up with the idea of Artix-based miners when we saw what the ASIC guys were NOT doing.

Sign up for our Newsletter and here is our VAT number: BR549.

[segfault88]

Anybody done the numbers to find out how many MH/s these would get? If you could get >1 GH per chip it might be worth looking into it.

[kingcoin]

How much does the Atrix7 cost? i.e. the XC7A200T or XC7A100T

[fpgaminer]

you'd think you could make some good sales with something that was at least ASIC-competitive but with a lower time to market.

Rewind the clock a few months, when ASICs were expected to ship within weeks, and you'll see why most FPGA based companies probably backed out of the market.  Beyond that, FPGAs are still at least twice as expensive as the current ASIC offerings and four times the power consumption.  Development of a new FPGA based miner would take weeks before shipping, if the firmware were even ready for it.  If you want to blame anyone, blame all the ASIC companies that poisoned the market and failed to deliver.

Of course, I continue to tinker with my FPGA designs in case some new fruit is found.  I now have 400MH/s firmware for the Kintex 7 chips running at ~15W.  FPGAs can also now do vanitygen.

[ursa]

Quote from Xilinx :
"

qty of 1k units for the Smallest and slowest Artix200 is around 110/120 USD
The biggest and fastest  Artix ( The 350T ) is around 350 USD ( for 1k units )

"

[kingcoin]

Quote from Xilinx :
qty of 1k units for the Smallest and slowest Artix200 is around 110/120 USD

So it beats the Spartan since you get more Mh/s/$.

[segfault88]

Of course, I continue to tinker with my FPGA designs in case some new fruit is found.  I now have 400MH/s firmware for the Kintex 7 chips running at ~15W.  FPGAs can also now do vanitygen.

How much is the Kintex 7?

[Carlton Banks]

Quote from Xilinx :
qty of 1k units for the Smallest and slowest Artix200 is around 110/120 USD

So it beats the Spartan since you get more Mh/s/$.

Maybe all those petitioning for a new run of x6500s would be better making different enquiries. You can't beat the re-purposing ability of FPGA technology, I'm fairly sure that new ASIC customers will be terrified of their ROI due to the various acts of Satoshi that could screw it up for them.

[makomk]

Not sure there'd really be any point to anyone developing them, since BFL have been shipping next month for about the last half-year or so.

[papamoi]

Not sure there'd really be any point to anyone developing them, since BFL have been shipping next month for about the last half-year or so.

the design and the rtl is avalaible somewhere?

BTW Makmok, i ve seen some of your job in github

great job

[aTg]

Maybe all those petitioning for a new run of x6500s would be better making different enquiries. You can't beat the re-purposing ability of FPGA technology, I'm fairly sure that new ASIC customers will be terrified of their ROI due to the various acts of Satoshi that could screw it up for them.

What the fuck are you talking about? speak in code so that no one understands you?

[Epicblood]

I get discounted chips from xilinx, so if someone gives me a PCB design that would work with any of the 7 series chips, I can order some up and make em.

only thing is IDK how to code in verilog much, so you'll have to use the opensource FPGA miner

EDIT: I have put together FPGAs before using Xilinx chips and have the tools required (not for mass production).

[papamoi]

Wich one did you get?

Wich price?

as i m interested in mass prod so if you have anything to share please pm thanks

[DarkPunk]

The cheapest XC7A200T I can get in singles is $242.5/chip

I just don't have the cash to drop for $250/chip to just test with.

[senseless]

Just need a simple board.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154483.0

Luke will code a driver for just about anything into bfgminer if you send him a unit.

[Epicblood]

Replied to your PM, like I told him,
my dad is a higher up in Xilinx so I get any/all of the chips at a nice discount

[filharvey]

you'd think you could make some good sales with something that was at least ASIC-competitive but with a lower time to market.

Rewind the clock a few months, when ASICs were expected to ship within weeks, and you'll see why most FPGA based companies probably backed out of the market.  Beyond that, FPGAs are still at least twice as expensive as the current ASIC offerings and four times the power consumption.  Development of a new FPGA based miner would take weeks before shipping, if the firmware were even ready for it.  If you want to blame anyone, blame all the ASIC companies that poisoned the market and failed to deliver.

Of course, I continue to tinker with my FPGA designs in case some new fruit is found.  I now have 400MH/s firmware for the Kintex 7 chips running at ~15W.  FPGAs can also now do vanitygen.

Have you tried a Virtex-7? Also what sort of Kintex 7 did you try it on.

Could this be turned in with the EasyPath 7, and mass produce a set of EasyPath Chips?

Phil

[Epicblood]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

[pizza]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

[Epicblood]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

lol just get me a pcb layout and I can start making em
I could sell em pretty cheap too, cause like I said, I get the chips discounted/free

[papamoi]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

lol just get me a pcb layout and I can start making em
I could sell em pretty cheap too, cause like I said, I get the chips discounted/free

i ve asked twice for a quotation you still did nt reply me and playing around

as i told you i could need 500 of each ,need to know the price

[Epicblood]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

lol just get me a pcb layout and I can start making em
I could sell em pretty cheap too, cause like I said, I get the chips discounted/free

i ve asked twice for a quotation you still did nt reply me and playing around

as i told you i could need 500 of each ,need to know the price

all depends on price of the pcb, I get the chips for half price,
I estimate about $100- 200 per FPGA (kintex-7)
Virtex-7 would be maybe 25-50 more

if enough people want it so I can order pcb in bulk, it'll will be even cheaper

[filharvey]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

lol just get me a pcb layout and I can start making em
I could sell em pretty cheap too, cause like I said, I get the chips discounted/free

i ve asked twice for a quotation you still did nt reply me and playing around

as i told you i could need 500 of each ,need to know the price

all depends on price of the pcb, I get the chips for half price,
I estimate about $100- 200 per FPGA (kintex-7)
Virtex-7 would be maybe 25-50 more

if enough people want it so I can order pcb in bulk, it'll will be even cheaper

The vertex 7 is only that more expensive, but would do what 4x the kintex? Also what would be needed for the pcb to get that going? What sort of controllers are we looking at?

[dan99]

What are the hash rates for these 28nm FPGA? tks

[DarkPunk]

What are the hash rates for these 28nm FPGA? tks

We won't know for sure until someone buys them and works with them.

[Epicblood]

Lets get this going, I'm sure a bunch of us could pool money together and get a group buy going on components and making the fpgas.

lol just get me a pcb layout and I can start making em
I could sell em pretty cheap too, cause like I said, I get the chips discounted/free

i ve asked twice for a quotation you still did nt reply me and playing around

as i told you i could need 500 of each ,need to know the price

all depends on price of the pcb, I get the chips for half price,
I estimate about $100- 200 per FPGA (kintex-7)
Virtex-7 would be maybe 25-50 more

if enough people want it so I can order pcb in bulk, it'll will be even cheaper

The vertex 7 is only that more expensive, but would do what 4x the kintex? Also what would be needed for the pcb to get that going? What sort of controllers are we looking at?

The virtex is about 20-30% faster than the kintex.
not exactly sure, I have no experience in making a PCB, I'm looking into that now myself

[gmaxwell]

Could this be turned in with the EasyPath 7, and mass produce a set of EasyPath Chips?

At least the hardcopy results at 45nm were not all that impressive— a bit better than the FPGAs, but you lose all the reconfigurability. I'm doubtful that EasyPath 7 will be enough of an improvement (plus the lead time!) to really be attractive.  My thinking here is that 28nm FPGAs can have short lead times and they're reconfigurable... and this may make up for modest MH/$ and and MH/j disadvantages compares to 100nm+ mining asics.

[dan99]

If I understand this correctly, since the 28nm chips is small we  can be place more of them into the pcb board?  what we need
now is the Price of this pcb board and the Hash rates it can produce?

[Herbalconfusion]

<----willing to invest in return for a finished product, 

[pizza]

what we need now is for someone to create a pcb design before pricing is even spoken of.

[Epicblood]

what we need now is for someone to create a pcb design before pricing is even spoken of.

Been saying this the whole time xD
someone makes me one I can get an FPGA togethor

[pizza]

what we need now is for someone to create a pcb design before pricing is even spoken of.

Been saying this the whole time xD
someone makes me one I can get an FPGA togethor

BUMP FOR THIS ^^ SOMEONE!!!

[Bogart]

<-- Also interested in investing in the dev effort in exchange for finished units.

[Epicblood]

If all you investors want to set up a bounty for a pcb design using the artix-7, kintex-7, and vertex-7 (3 diff boards) that would be great
or if you send however much BTC you wanna offer for this to me, I'll set up the bounty, either way that's all I need to start work on a 28nm mining FPGA

[kingcoin]

If I understand this correctly, since the 28nm chips is small we  can be place more of them into the pcb board?  what we need
now is the Price of this pcb board and the Hash rates it can produce?

The size of the die inside the chip is smaller, or more logic/LUT's can be fit in the same die area as the previous generation.

The actual package might or might not be smaller. The smaller FPGA's in the Artix family is available in 10x10mm packages (0.5 mm pitch), even though high capacity Artix FPGA's more suited to mining is only available in bigger packages, 19x19mm being the smallest. However, many hobbyist/PCB designers prefer larger packages which have pins which can be be soldered by hand (some hard core hobbyist can solder BGA's using other heating devices)

[Epicblood]

One of my friends and I are working on designing the PCB (he knows how to do it an stuff) so once I get that, I will be adapting the opensource FPGA miner to run on it (we will be using 2x Atrix-7)
will make a thread in proj dev to keep you all updated.

[fpgaminer]

One of my friends and I are working on designing the PCB (he knows how to do it an stuff) so once I get that, I will be adapting the opensource FPGA miner to run on it (we will be using 2x Atrix-7)
will make a thread in proj dev to keep you all updated.

I just updated the repo with a DSP48E1 design, for Kintex 7.  400MH/s using 80% of the DSPs, and ~25% of random logic.  I don't have an Artix-7 to port to, but I think they also have DSP48E1's.  I plan to start revamping the code base to better support multi-core designs and standardize the communication modules.  Hope to get my Kintex up to at least 1GH/s by throwing in two regular hashing cores.

[Epicblood]

One of my friends and I are working on designing the PCB (he knows how to do it an stuff) so once I get that, I will be adapting the opensource FPGA miner to run on it (we will be using 2x Atrix-7)
will make a thread in proj dev to keep you all updated.

I just updated the repo with a DSP48E1 design, for Kintex 7.  400MH/s using 80% of the DSPs, and ~25% of random logic.  I don't have an Artix-7 to port to, but I think they also have DSP48E1's.  I plan to start revamping the code base to better support multi-core designs and standardize the communication modules.  Hope to get my Kintex up to at least 1GH/s by throwing in two regular hashing cores.

Nice, I'll be sure to test it out on my eval board when I get a chance. Shouldn't have to change too much.

[Dexter770221]

fpgaminer: your board it's KC705 with K7325T?
400 MH/s is not impressive compared to 300MH/s from cripled Spartan6 (bitfury aproach of small rolled cores). I know that you will throw a second core but IMHO still not worth a hassle

[makomk]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

It seems to be a lot harder to get bitcoin miners to place and route successfully on Artix-7 than on Kintex-7.

I just updated the repo with a DSP48E1 design, for Kintex 7.  400MH/s using 80% of the DSPs, and ~25% of random logic.  I don't have an Artix-7 to port to, but I think they also have DSP48E1's.  I plan to start revamping the code base to better support multi-core designs and standardize the communication modules.  Hope to get my Kintex up to at least 1GH/s by throwing in two regular hashing cores.

Cool!

[Epicblood]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

It seems to be a lot harder to get bitcoin miners to place and route successfully on Artix-7 than on Kintex-7.

I don't think it's going to be that much of a problem, If it is I can/will use the Kintex, but trying to keep it as low cost as possible.

[phk]

I don't think it's going to be that much of a problem, If it is I can/will use the Kintex, but trying to keep it as low cost as possible.

Someone should sit down and do the math.  I have a feeling that Artix/Cyclone is the families to go with.  In the next step up, you're buying more than just gates, and these hashing functions really don't need anything.

[Epicblood]

While the artix family is probably the most cost effective, a few kintex boards would probably be better/more power efficient than a ton of artix  boards.

[phk]

While the artix family is probably the most cost effective, a few kintex boards would probably be better/more power efficient than a ton of artix  boards.

Well, if you want to do that math, you need to use the power estimation tools from Xilinx/Altera.

As far as "few" vs. "ton", I think roughly you need (2) low-grade for (1) medium-grade.

In the case of Xilinx 7 devices, at $300 vs. $3k, that math is kind of easy.

[gmaxwell]

The really high end FPGAs are targeted at people doing large scale logic simulations and other stuff that _cannot_ be done in a smaller part and so they have a premium price, they also often have very fast specialized IO hardware and other stuff that mining doesn't need.  I wouldn't expect them to be the most effective for mining. I expect mining to be most cost effective on whatever the largest or second largest low end devices is in any product line— keeping down the per chip costs and also dodging premium product pricing.

Of course, nothing beats actually simulating a design.

[gmaxwell]

I note: People paying 75 BTC for a 10GH/s 110nm ASIC miner.

[Lacan82]

These projects always interest me. Anyone direct me on material to read to learn to design PCBs for FPGA miners?

[seleme]

I note: People paying 75 BTC for a 10GH/s 110nm ASIC miner.

People are idiots or they're pumping asicminer share prices for their own good.

My bet would be on 2nd as asicminer share pumpers are pretty hardworking and religiously devoted group, doubt anyone is idiot to pay that price for hashing power that mines 0.6 btc at this difficulty and as such needs more than 4 months to meet ROI without difficulty rise.

[gingernuts]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

It seems to be a lot harder to get bitcoin miners to place and route successfully on Artix-7 than on Kintex-7.

Do you know, is that just because the Artix devices are smaller, or have Xilinx 'cost-optimised' the routing resources in Artix?

[Inspector 2211]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

It seems to be a lot harder to get bitcoin miners to place and route successfully on Artix-7 than on Kintex-7.

Do you know, is that just because the Artix devices are smaller, or have Xilinx 'cost-optimised' the routing resources in Artix?

The usable chip area of the Artix-7-200T looks like a giant 'H', think of a building signage 'H' as in 'HOSPITAL', with two unusable 'parks' thrown in for good measure, a 'Central Park' and a 'Golden Gate Park'.

As far as I have been told, the usable chip area of the Kintex-7 is a huge rectangle.

Get it?

[gingernuts]

I think Artix-7 would be the best one/most cost efficient to mine BTC on, Virtex is a bit of overkill, and a lot more expensive.

Zynq would probably be amazing as well though (I think)

It seems to be a lot harder to get bitcoin miners to place and route successfully on Artix-7 than on Kintex-7.

Do you know, is that just because the Artix devices are smaller, or have Xilinx 'cost-optimised' the routing resources in Artix?

The usable chip area of the Artix-7-200T looks like a giant 'H', think of a building signage 'H' as in 'HOSPITAL', with two unusable 'parks' thrown in for good measure, a 'Central Park' and a 'Golden Gate Park'.

As far as I have been told, the usable chip area of the Kintex-7 is a huge rectangle.

Get it?

Thanks - the Zynq seems to have the same hole in the middle issue as Artix